Overview

Get early spend visibility and speed up your procurement process. Ramp Procurement lets you capture every purchase request in one place, automatically loop in the right approvers, and manage purchase orders in one complete platform.

Jump to:

• Creating a Procurement Program
  • Build your intake form
  • Ask questions about the request conditionally to streamline your intake process
  • Automatically map form responses to fields on the PO
  • Optionally allow accounting fields to be selected
  • Set who can request from the program
  • Set who needs to approve
  • Optionally create a virtual card once fully approved
• Requesting from a Procurement Program
• Reviewing Procurement Requests
• Customizing Purchase Orders
• Downloading and Sending Ramp POs
• Matching Bills to Purchase Orders in Ramp
• Syncing Purchase Orders into Accounting
• FAQs

Creating a Procurement Program

To set up a procurement workflow for your company, navigate to Spend Programs and click on "new spend program." Note: Only Admin roles can create spend programs on Ramp. Choose the "Procurement" option to get started.

Build your intake form

Next, you can add questions to customize your procurement intake form. You can specify the question type from the following options:

• Ramp Vendor - allow employees to select from a dropdown of existing vendors in your company or add new vendor
• Text - free form text box
• Paragraph - long form text box
• Single Select - radio button select of custom options
• Multi Select - select multiple options from list
• File Upload - field to allow for upload of any relevant files for the spend program request
• Link - field to allow for any relevant links to be shared
• Number - field to allow input of numbers
• Date - field to allow input of date
• Email - field for email
• Boolean - yes/no question
• Address - field for address
• Ramp Department - list of departments on Ramp

Conditionally ask questions to streamline the intake process

You can also add conditional questions by clicking on the "Always ask this question" dropdown on each question. Choose a preceding question (type: Boolean, Single Select, Multi Select) and set the logic to conditionally ask questions to your employees. 

Map form responses to purchase order fields

You can also "Add mapping" or drop-in a purchase order field to collect in your request form. You can map the following fields on the purchase order.

• Billing contact - first name, last name, phone, email
• Bill to address - billing address
• Net payment terms - number in days
• Vendor address - vendor's address
• Vendor contact - first name, last name, phone, email
• Promise date - date
• Shipping contact - first name, last name, phone, email
• Shipping address - shipping address
• Memo - memo on the purchase order
• Attachments - file upload that appends pdf, png, jpg to end of the purchase order

After request submission, you can manually edit these fields on the purchase order.

Allow employees to submit line item coding

For inventory companies, employees often submit purchase requests for specific inventory items in their accounting system. You can turn this toggle on to allow employees to add GL categories for expense line items and inventory items for item line items. You can choose which accounting fields you want to display on the request form. Even after a PO is submitted/approved, the requester and admins can update these fields.

Admins can enable line item coding on procurement spend programs so that employees can add line item coding when submitting a request. Admins also have the option to make line item coding required.

Customize visibility

You can configure additional controls such as specifying which employees are able to request spend from this program (e.g. only allow employees from the Engineering department to request from this program) and which individuals should be involved with the spend program’s approvals.

Customizing approval policy

For approvals, Ramp will automatically default to the global Spend Request Approval Policy configured within Company Settings; however, you also have the option to set a custom approval policy for the specific procurement program.
Note, the custom approval policy will only apply to the spend program it was created within (e.g. the Procurement - Software custom approval policy in the screenshot below would not be available to select when creating another spend program)

You can use your intake questions to conditionally route approvals (e.g. If the vendor has access to sensitive business information, loop in IT & Security). You can also trigger contract reviews with CLM providers like Ironclad.

Customers can also add conditions to approvals for spend programs based on line item coding for accounting fields. To do this - edit a spend program's approvals workflow, and then you will see all the line item fields you have enabled appear in the conditions dropdown.

Please note: In order to do this, the line item coding must be enabled.

Customize payment method

Last step is to customize the payment method for your procurement program. By default, purchase requests will issue Purchase Orders on Ramp but you can set it to a Virtual Card. You can also customize if the payment method can be updated by approvers and admins upon the request.

Once all the relevant details have been inputted into the spend program, you can click “Create” to make the spend program live and available for the applicable employees to request from.

Requesting from a Procurement Program

Employees can click “Request spend” and select the Procurement program that is available to them. See the dedicated Employee Guide for more information.

• Employees can save requests as drafts and re-access it from their "My Ramp" dashboard.
• For the vendor question, requesters have the option to select an existing vendor within Ramp or a new vendor. If they select a new vendor, request will be clearly denoted with a "new" badge next to the vendor name. When the request is approved, the new vendor will be created within Ramp and added to the Vendors tab. 
• Once, the requestor has inputted all the necessary details, they can submit their request and have it routed to the appropriate approvers. Their pending requests will appear within their “My Ramp” dashboard.
• Approvers will receive a notification via email and slack (if enabled) when they are up next for approval.
• Once the request receives all its approvals, a purchase order will be created. Purchase orders are accessible both via the vendor profile in the Vendors tab and the Procurement tab.

Reviewing Procurement Requests

Once you create your first Procurement program, you'll see a new Procurement tab in the main navigation. In this tab, you can:

• View all requests, your drafts, requests that need your approval, and pending requests
  • You can also see the request duration to see how long the request is taking
• View all open, partially billed, fully billed, and closed purchase orders

You can also sync your purchase orders into your accounting system from the Purchase orders tab.

Customizing Purchase Orders

Ramp Procurement allows you to customize purchase orders for your business needs. To do so, navigate to Procurement > Purchase orders > Settings. You can also set different configurations per entity on Ramp.

• PO Numbering - Customize the prefix for your POs
• Logo - Upload a logo for your PO PDF
• Billing address - Set a default billing address
• Billing contact - Set a default billing contact (e.g. invoices@domain)
• Footer text - Customize instructions for every PO

Downloading and Sending Ramp POs

Admins, approvers, and PO owners can download Ramp purchase orders into a PDF or send them directly to the vendor contact's email inbox. Click the "More" option on a purchase order and choose either "Send to vendor" or "Download PDF."

Matching Bills to Purchase Orders in Ramp

Ramp allows you to match invoices in Ramp Bill Pay to purchase orders created in Ramp. There are two ways to submit an invoice against a purchase order.

1. PO owner can directly "Upload invoice" on the purchase order to send the received invoice to your company's AP team. This will be sent to Bill Pay > Drafts and automatically OCRed by Ramp's AI.
2. In the Bill Pay workflow, you can choose a "Matching purchase order" for the invoice.

How does automated matching work?

• If there's an exact match for the Ramp purchase order # on the invoice, Ramp will automatically match the invoice to the Ramp PO.
• If the vendor doesn't add the Ramp PO# on the invoice, Ramp will show you suggested purchase orders in the "Matching purchase order" dropdown that's filtered by the vendor.
• Once a matching purchase order is selected, Ramp will also automatically match invoice line items with purchase order line items.
  • Once the line items are connected, if there's accounting coding on the PO line items, we'll automatically pull those fields in on the Invoice line item.

• Once you bill against the PO, you will see the remaining spend available on the PO.

• Invoices can be over-billed against a PO today and this will be clearly shown on the PO like below.

Syncing Purchase Orders into Accounting

Purchase orders created in Ramp can be synced into NetSuite and QuickBooks Online. Learn more in Syncing Ramp Purchase Orders into Accounting. If you have POs in your accounting provider, you can also use our Import PO feature for NetSuite and QuickBooks Online.

FAQs 

What is the difference between the virtual card and purchase order payment options?

• A Purchase Order requires invoices to be uploaded, and invoices go through a whole other set of approvals through bill pay (this is typically good for larger purchases or any spend you want to have centralized or reviewed by your AP/Finance team)
• A Virtual Card is good for spend where you don't necessarily want to go through an approval - once approved, the requester will receive a card for the approved amount (this is typically good for smaller dollar amounts and/or when you really trust the requester)
  • The card will automatically be restricted to the vendor requested in the PO
  • If an end date was specified in the request, that would also be carried over to the card
  • When the card is used, it will trigger the requester's credit card transaction approval flow

Is there a way to edit a PO after it has been approved? Will it go through the approval process again? 

Employees cannot edit a PO after it has been approved, but admins can edit purchase orders at any time. If an admin edits it after approval, it will not go through the approval process again. Changes are recorded in the activity tab. Employees can submit change orders, read more here. 

Is there a way to delete a PO that has been approved? 

You can archive a PO that has been approved. 

How can I customize a PO? And is there a way to edit the way my logo looks on a PO?

• On the Purchase Orders tab, select "settings"
• From settings, you can:
  • Upload a company logo (at this time we do not let you edit the way your logo looks on a PO)
  • Apply a prefix to purchase order numbers going forward
  • Add a default billing address and billing contact
  • Add footer text
• Save your preferences

What’s included in Ramp Procurement?

Ramp Procurement allows customers to build a custom, automated procurement process in Ramp. This is done using the following set of procurement-only features:

• • “Procurement” spend programs
    • Build custom intake forms that employees can request purchases from
    • Build approval workflows to automatically route purchase requests to approvers based on specific conditions 
    • Ability to issue a purchase order or virtual card from a fully approved request 
  • Procurement Requests 
  • Purchase orders 
  • Procurement tab
  • Ironclad integration

How are contracts handled in Ramp Procurement? 

Contracts can be managed in Ramp in two instances

• During intake
  • Employees can attach contracts or quotes to their procurement intake requests so approvers can reference when reviewing requests. 
  • If Ironclad is connected to Ramp, contracts attached to the intake request will sync over to Ironclad and included in the Ironclad workflow. The final executed contract from Ironclad will then sync back over to Ramp and stored in the generated Purchase Order. 
  • Learn more here. 
• For renewals 
  • Upload the final executed contract into the vendor profile. Ramp will OCR the contract, pull all the key fields and record them for you. Once the contract is recorded in Ramp, you can set up 30 or 60 day automated renewal reminders. 
  • Learn more here.
• Contracts management workflows like legal redlining or e-signature are not supported in Ramp. 

Does Ramp Procurement include functionality to handle vendor RFPs or RFQs?

No, Ramp does not support vendor RFP/RFQ management at this time. If the customer requires RFP/RFQ management they can still use a separate tool outside of Ramp, and use Ramp Procurement for intake, approvals and purchase orders. 

What’s the difference between a “Card” Program and a “Procurement” program?

Provided you are a Plus customer, 

• Card programs allow you to issue cards with the same configurations at scale. These programs are great for issuing recurring card spend like WFH funds, Education benefits, etc. 
• Procurement programs allow you to set up an automated procurement process with the flexibility to issue purchase orders or one-time virtual cards. Procurement requests populate in a new Procurement tab that provides visibility into each request, approval status, and purchase order. If an admin wants to issue a card off of procurement requests, admins have the flexibility to adjust and configure card controls after the request is received